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Pleistocene Big Cats
Freak Felids - A Discussion of History's Largest Felines
Freak Felids - A Discussion of History's Largest Felines
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Freak Felids - A Discussion of History's Largest Felines
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Are we collectively doing wrong??
The intermediate Panthera cat Clouded leopard range, Snow Leopard (i hate these fkg names, Why not Clouded/Snow Lion (or) Clouded/Snow Tiger?? why??) range,Leopard range,Asiatic Lion range and Tiger range ALL are MERGE at one point even TODAY.Yes, Himalayan foot hills where they were first evolved. If that is the case Asiatic lions,Bengal Tigers and Asiatic Leopards were the first evolved Panthera big cats.Then they spread to.... 1.Asiatic Lions>>> Cave>>> Barbary>>> Africa lions last. 2.Bengal Tiger>>>Sumatran(java/bali)>>>South China>>>Siberian last. 3.Asiatic Leopard>>>left-Africa>>>Right-China>>Jaguar last.   *This image is copyright of its original author
Hello, i would know about one thing:
Scientist claim both Tigers and Snow Lepoards are closely related and evolved/diverged from a common ancestor Is that true? In the other hand, Tigers might diverge from Leopard/Jaguard/Lion lineage I have found myself Snow Leopard look like more tiger than leopard, in particular for his massive face Also one question about stripes, why Tigers are the only ones having those stripes among all big cats? Due to the environment? swamp, forest, jungle... Thanks for any input (11-22-2016, 03:37 PM)ronron Wrote: Hello, i would know about one thing: Yes, Tigers and Snow Lepoards are closely related and evolved/diverged from one common ancestor. One Grandma cat (like today's house cat size) --------> Intermediate cat-Clouded leopard ------> a and b a) Snow leopard and Tiger b) Lion,Jag and Leopard (for me, jag is leopard with some dots!) Siberian... lite orange,lite stripes Bengal.... medium orange,medium stripes Sumatra... dark orange,thick stripes So,more vegetation more thick color and stripes help the tiger to blend in. It look funny how a big orange cat with black stripes in green jungle camouflages!! but it work just fine for tiger. Scientist theory: Scientists say that many wild animals are color blind, or do not see vivid colors, instead they only see certain shades. This means that the tigers vertical stripes would then look like bands of shadow and light in the tall grass. The stripes break up and hide the outlines of its body as it hunts, making it hardly noticeable.
So the former theory about tigers evolving from a small group of cave lions who had been chased away from savanah to swamp/forest, wasn't relevant?
If tigers/snow leopards connection are proven by scientist community at 100%, lions/tigers are separated in different big cat species, right? Leopard/jaguard/lion vs tiger/snow leopard vs clouded leopard
Cave lions are a fake story (or) some Asiatic lions were lived in caves there in the past.
We are here talking about PANTHERA linage - BIG CATS and/or Apex predators.  *This image is copyright of its original author
@
For cave lion information, please check out this thread. @ronron , for phylogenies this figure from Tseng et al. (2013) is great:  *This image is copyright of its original author Some dating has been argued (i.e. the cave lions are stated by Barnett et al. (2016) to have split nearly 2 mya from the modern lion) but functionally everything seems agreed by upon by most. Yes the tiger's closest living relative would be the snow leopard, but close in this sense is a bit meaningless, as the lineages diverged about 9 millions years ago (mya). The tiger is a very ancient species that diverged from the cat family very, very long ago and thus even its closest relative is a very distant relative. On stripes, two things had to have occurred. Some cats early in the tiger lineage had a chance mutation that gave them stripes. Some advantage then amplified this trait. No formal study has been done on stripes in modern times but breaking the outline of the tiger is the most common reason I've read. Remember mutations come before adaptations, and the tiger may only have stripes because from all the big cat lineages, only the tiger by random chance gained stripes at some point. 
That's a big femur, do you know the size/weight of the Bengal Tiger used for the Femur?
The femur is actually an Amur femur that I scaled to the size of a Bengal tiger I found in American Museum of Natural History in NY. The femur has been scaled to 400 mm, just a bit longer than the femur in AMNH that came from a 236 kg wild male Bengal tiger.
(01-05-2017, 05:27 AM)tigerluver Wrote: The femur is actually an Amur femur that I scaled to the size of a Bengal tiger I found in American Museum of Natural History in NY. The femur has been scaled to 400 mm, just a bit longer than the femur in AMNH that came from a 236 kg wild male Bengal tiger. That's impressive, an additional 3'' on for the Ngandong Tiger compared to the bengals hindquarters and probably 2'' on the forequarters "shoulder height" (that's an estimate, I don't know the ratio of Femur to Humerus) I'd estimate that specimen to be around 280kg assuming body length correlates with shoulder height. 
The Pleistocene tigers in China.
 *This image is copyright of its original author  *This image is copyright of its original author  *This image is copyright of its original author  *This image is copyright of its original author  *This image is copyright of its original author
Maybe leopard and hyena?
BTW, they were much more robust built than the modern tigers. 
Very interesting pictures, Grizzly. Good find.
The length of the limbs is remarkable. They must have been taller than the tigers of today. Most bones seem relatively larger and denser as well. All in all, one gets the impression that late Pleistocene tigers were larger and more robust than those of today. Apart from the length of the limbs and the robust bones, the proportions seem similar to those of modern tigers. Tigers most probably always had relatively short skulls and robust canines. Could have been an adaption of solitary hunters hunting large animals. I also noticed that the bones in the fore-arms seem proportionally more developed than in other cats. As it isn't any different in modern tigers, the adaption most probably happened tens of thousands of years ago. For analogy. I remember an article about human skeletons found not so long ago in the UK. As the bones in the arm were quite a bit larger and more robust than average, researchers first thought they had been different from modern humans. Later, they concluded the skeletons had belonged to soldiers. Professional bowman, to be more precise. The bones of the fore-arm had adapted to the pressure. They also found plenty of healed fractures. This means that the pressure that resulted in larger bones in the fore-arms of professional bowmen could compare to the pressure that resulted in larger bones in the fore-arms of tigers. When I thought of bows, I remembered the book of J.F. Brandt ('Untersuchungen über die Verbreitung des Tigers felis Tigris und seine Beziehungen zur Menschheit' , St. Petersburg, 1856). Brandt read just about everything available about tigers in his day. Varro, who studied Iranian and Armenian books, thought the Armenian word for tigers ('tigris') was an Iranian word. In Sanskrit, 'tig' means sharp. The word 'tigra' refers to sharp, fast or arrow. In new Persian, 'tig' refers to arrow as well. The name used for the Tigris river refers to 'fast flowing'. Returning to your post. I noticed the mandibula is nearly straight. This is also often seen in modern Amur tiger skulls. The upper skull also reminds me of Amur tigers (dense, elevated, relatively narrow and large canines). Do you know where the bones were found?
@peter
The upper cave is located in Zhoukoudian near Beijing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhoukoudian These tigers were likely the prehistoric relatives of the Amur tiger. And their robustness was remarkable, comparable to that of the giant Pleistocene lions. I also notice few convergent evolutionary patterns among all Pleistocene big cats. |
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